Legislative Principles

1. The increasing demand for continual learning throughout the working career implies that career-related education and training programs will be most effective if they combine academic and vocational content, integrate work-based with school-based learning, and ensure that each program can lead to more advanced programs.

The United States and other industrialized countries are moving toward a learning-based economy. Increasingly rapid mobility of capital and information forces firms to become ever more nimble. The accelerating pace of change within organizations and mobility of people among workplaces require everyone to keep learning all the time. Learning includes the transfer of existing information, knowledge, and skill from those who have them to those who need them; it also includes the discovery of previously unknown facts and principles to improve products, services, and methods of production. This is a learning-based economy, where the success of individuals, companies, and nations depends increasingly on how well and how fast they can learn (Bailey, 1990; Brown, Reich, and Stern, 1991).

In many countries, this development is reflected in new conceptions of work-related education and training. The key elements of the emerging model are closer integration of vocational and academic studies, greater use of practical work experience along with classroom learning, and better opportunity for participants in work-related programs to continue their preparation at more advanced levels. In the United States, these changes have begun to occur in secondary schools and postsecondary educational institutions. As stated in the discussion of principles 2 and 3, we believe that more secondary school and college programs should be created along these lines. These ideas can also be applied to work-related programs for out-of-school youth, employed or unemployed adults, welfare recipients, and others who participate in work-related education and training.

The key elements of this new model are as follows:

First, integration of vocational and academic content is intended to ensure that today's student or trainee acquires sufficient understanding of the concepts necessary to adapt to tomorrow's conditions. Attention is given to many aspects of an industry or occupation, not just to specific skills required in entry-level jobs. In school or college, this means breaking down existing boundaries between academic disciplines--including such traditional subjects as mathematics, language, science, and social studies--and vocational specialties--such as health occupations, electronics and computers, office management, construction careers, diagnosis and repair of mechanical systems, and banking and finance. In practice, efforts to combine academic and vocational content have ranged from simply adding instruction in basic academic skills to vocational courses, to creating multi-year interdisciplinary programs that reorganize the entire curriculum around a career-related theme (Grubb et al., 1991).
Second, making work-based learning an integral part of the instructional program enables students or trainees to use the workplace to build their own knowledge and skill. This provides practice in the kind of learning-in-context that is increasingly required for career mobility and participation in flexible organizations. Work-based learning coupled with classroom instruction is part of the traditional apprenticeship model; it is also a feature of cooperative education, career academies, new youth apprenticeships, and some programs for out-of-school youth (Stern et al., 1994b). In secondary and postsecondary education, school-based enterprises also provide opportunities for work-based learning by engaging students in the provision of goods or services--for example, building houses, publishing books, running restaurants, or conducting research--as part of their instruction (Stern et al., 1994a).
Third, the emerging model of career-related education and training is designed to ensure that students or trainees retain the option of continuing their studies at a more advanced level. In the learning-based economy, this means that individuals can use the educational system in the future if they want to make a career change, or are forced to do so.

These three elements reinforce each other. Combining academic and vocational instruction lets students or trainees get more out of work-based learning, by explaining the conceptual significance of issues that arise in the work situation. It also keeps their options open for further education--both by satisfying academic prerequisites and by improving individuals' access to higher paying jobs, through which they can more easily finance further schooling.

Similarly, integrating work-based learning with classroom instruction can connect theory and practice. This not only gives students new insights and motivation in academic subjects but also deepens the content of vocational studies. Using work to reinforce schooling, rather than allowing it to undermine schooling--as sometimes happens when students are employed in jobs that are not connected to school--also helps prevent some students from dropping out and, thus, protects their option to pursue further education.

Finally, preserving the option of continuing studies at a more advanced level helps ensure that a program will attract some of the more ambitious and talented who are seeking rigorous academic preparation combined with practical studies. This also enhances work-based learning, because students or trainees who are considering further education are more likely to be interested in trying out a wide range of work roles and exploring many aspects of an industry.

There is evidence that programs exhibiting some or all of these features are effective. For example, career academies organize two to four years of high school around an occupational theme such as health occupations, finance, computers, communications media, or electronics. In career academies, academic and vocational teachers work together to integrate the curriculum, and students have paid jobs or unpaid internships related to their field of study. After graduation, although some students enter full-time employment in the field, many go directly to college, despite the fact that career academies sometimes recruit high proportions of freshmen or sophomores who are evidently at risk of not completing high school. Evaluations have found that career academy students perform better in school than do comparable students from the same high schools (Stern, Raby, and Dayton, 1992). Likewise, career magnet high schools, which also blend the academic and vocational curriculum and send graduates to work and college, have been found to improve students' school performance (Crain et al., 1992).

Recent Federal legislation, with bipartisan support, has given impetus to these ideas. In particular, the 1990 Amendments to the Carl Perkins Act mandated the integration of academic and vocational education, partly in response to employers' demands for workers who are better prepared for the learning-based economy. Academic-vocational integration was further endorsed in 1994 by the School-to-Work Opportunities Act (STWOA) and the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. The STWOA also promotes work-based learning tied to classroom instruction, and preserving students' option to pursue further education or training.

These ideas imply major changes in conventional practice, and even with Federal backing, they need time to take hold. The reforms that the 1990 Amendments to the Carl Perkins Act set in motion are considerable, as the report of the National Assessment of Vocational Education (1994) indicates. But they have only begun to occur. This is not surprising when we consider that the Amendments have been in effect for only a few years, while the divisions between academic and vocational education have existed much longer. Implementing an up-to-date system of work-related education and training will require new Federal legislation that builds upon the initiatives of 1990 and 1994, and tries to consolidate them within the educational system and extend them to programs for out-of-school youth and adults.

In order to sustain reform efforts, Congress should consider lengthening the time period over which it authorizes legislation. The current five-year cycle is too short, because changes must be evaluated in their first and second years in order for Congressional deliberations to begin in year five. Congress might consider a cycle of seven to ten years instead.